Bill Sardithe vitamin supplement answer man

1. A paper, written by investigators at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, as published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is a follow-up from a prior study published in 2011 that reached a similar conclusion. So it’s not news. (See No. 4 below) It is a confirming study. It appears to have been times for release to coincide with other negative reports involving dietary supplements.

2. The paper did not factor for other dietary supplements; maybe the non-aggressive cancers were vitamin supplement users. It is well established that omega-3 oils can promote or inhibit cancer based upon a variety of factors not considered in this narrow data analysis. A list of the carcinogenic and anti-carcinogenic properties of omega-3 oils were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

4. In a prior study authored by the same investigators (Am J Epidemiology 173: 1429-39, 2011), they reported the risk for aggressive prostate cancer rose, then fell, then rose (1.00, 2.65, 1.84, 2.50) with increasing blood concentration of DHA. This is not a consistent response.

5. The 2011 study also concluded that increasing blood concentrations of trans fat (hydrogenated fats), known to be deleterious in arteries, cut the risk for aggressive prostate cancer in half. So are we to conclude men should throw out DHA fish oil capsules (DHA being essential for life) and return to eating sticks of margarine?

6. No mortality data is provided, so we really don’t know if males with prostate cancer would survive longer avoiding DHA or not.